


ichor/ambrosia

by blackkat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Divine Bargains, M/M, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 08:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20672162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: The tether of the sacred fire being lit pulls him back across the universe.





	ichor/ambrosia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WrithingBeneathYou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/gifts).

> For the ever-fabulous, ever-astounding WritingBeneathYou! I can't say enough how much you've inspired me with your art and your humor, and this was a pleasure to write. I hope this day holds the best of all things for you!

The tether of the sacred fire being lit pulls him back across the universe.

Madara leaves a half-burning star, turns his attention away as it collapses in upon itself. A casualty, or a new creation—if there has ever been a difference for the gods, Madara has never found it. And it’s beautiful, for certain, a dark and burning thing.

With a small, sharp smile, Madara passes a hand over the star, pleased with the mix of creation and destruction. Hashirama will protest, but it suits Madara.

He can't look away from the sacred fire for long, though. It’s a thread of gold through his heart, a bright and burning call, and he steps across a thousand galaxies in a moment, passes the dark doors that Obito guards—a chained thing, tortured, a terror in the shadows who hisses at the hem of Madara's robes—to emerge into the sunlight.

The land is lush and green, and the mountaintop hums with life. Hashirama has been busy while Madara kept himself occupied with kindling stars. It reeks of verdant joy, rising from the ground and curling on the wind, and Madara shakes his head even as he smiles. A fool. A beautiful, endlessly powerful fool, but _Madara's_ fool, and worth every moment of the pain and heartache of their long war against the old gods.

His footsteps echo loudly in the empty marble of the temple, the black pillars reflecting the light of the sun and the lines of fire that spread like spilled water across the floor. For all the life outside, this place is void of it, the darkness and ash driving away all creatures who might be foolish enough to enter. The fire does little to help, hisses gleefully and crackles loud and sharp as it slides across the stone, curls around Madara's feet and burns bright for his presence.

Humans don’t come here. They seek kinder gods, smaller gods. Gods like those in the rivers, those who tie themselves to stone or winds or moments, not great gods. Not destroyers. Even Hashirama, beautiful and laughing, is too grand a thing for mortal hands.

(There are whispers, even now. Stories of a boy so full of rage and pain that he caught Madara's eye, so fiercely doomed that Madara saved him, remade him, _changed_ him. But Madara is a black thing, even among other shadowed stars, and it would have been a far kinder fate for him to have died in darkness and stayed there, crushed by stone.)

But the sacred fire has been lit, the spark carried from the twin temple that stands far to the west beneath the setting sun, and that means human hands. Determined hands, but mortal; no other would have dared the trek. Madara is curious, despite himself; too many centuries he’s turned his eyes away, tended stars instead of souls except when Hashirama calls him home, and whatever moments of benignity he might have once showed have faded, fractured, failed to keep in human minds. He’s a thing of terror now, a shadow, a specter that looms over kind lives and takes as often as he gives.

Whatever soul would seek him out is a bold one.

The main hall stretches out before him, and Madara steps out of the shadows into a split darkness, the brilliance of the fire reflected a thousand times in polished black stone, beating back the overwhelming gloom in darts and starts and drags.

There's a man before the sacred fire on its white altar. A human man, tall and broad, and when he hears the sound of Madara's steps he turns all at once. No wide eyes, no surprise—Madara catches the look on his face and for the first time in centuries he falters. Stops short, robes swirling like shadows around his feet, and hopes it looks deliberate, but—

Those eyes are more intent than any he’s seen in a very long time, and the look on his face is focus and determination and something sharp enough to cut all at once.

And then, in a flicker-quick shift, the man’s face opens, softens. He grins, a white flash in the dark and steps forward. Doesn’t bow, but faces Madara as if they’re equals, god and man.

“Madara!” he says, and it’s loud, but somehow bright. “You came!”

Madara looks him over for a long, silent moment, calculating. A strong man, a fighter—there are calluses on his knuckles, but no stains on his spirit. Not a killer, then, and Madara steps forward, darkly amused. Circles the man, deliberate, careful steps, and watches those dark eyes follow him closely as he does.

“The last man who lit that blaze I tore open,” he says, mocking. “Are human tales so forgetful that such a deed has already passed from memory? Perhaps I should make your death more…memorable.”

Just for a moment he sees it again, that flicker of determination, the set to his features that speaks of unshakeable faith, as steady as stone. The man steps to the side, putting himself firmly in Madara's path, and says, “My name is Maito Gai.”

Madara opens his mouth to mock the thought that he should care, lifts a hand to call up the cosmic fires that will burn his soul from existence—

A hand catches his wrist. Human fingers, long and strong, a tight grip against the skin between his glove and sleeve. Madara stills, startled beyond words by the touch, by the way Gai doesn’t flinch from the burn of the fire beneath Madara's skin. His soul is flame and ash and stardust, but Gai meets his eyes like he’s any other man and says, “I would challenge you, Madara.”

For a moment, Madara almost doubts his hearing. Stares, eyes narrowing, but Gai doesn’t budge. There's a light in his eyes, a steadiness that bothers Madara in some way he can't fit around into words, and with a scowl Madara wrenches his hand away.

Tries to. _Tries_ to wrench his hand away, but Gai holds him still and doesn’t let go.

There’s no sense to it, no logic. Madara was born to the fires of an old creation, bathed in dying starlight long before that universe ended and he and Hashirama built a new one on its bones. Mortal flesh unshapes itself in the face of what Madara has always been, but—

Not this flesh. Not this man.

“_Challenge_ me,” Madara says, and it comes out a snarl. He jerks his hand down, pulls it from Gai's grip that way, and refuses to take a step away even though he thinks of it for a very long moment. “What reason could a mortal man have for challenging me in these halls?”

“We could do it outside them, if you’d like,” Gai says, smiling, _solicitous. _It drags fury up through Madara's breast, makes the flames around them leap and crackle.

“A challenge against a god?” he mocks, and deliberately steps back, not a retreat. Black stone rises, flows, and Madara sinks down in a throne of smoky glass, resting an elbow on the arm and propping his chin on his fist. “And you thought to come to me first? How brave.”

Gai tips his chin up, meets the mockery with a steady stance and depthless dark eyes. “Lady Mito told me,” he says, just a little quieter than before, “that you can open the doors to Death.”

Madara pauses, and he’s very tired already of being caught off-guard, unable to predict where this man intends to go. “Mito,” he says darkly, and sweeps a look over the man, checking for any traces of the interfering harpy’s favor. There are none, though, and somehow that unsettles Madara even more. The goddess of the tides is never slow to claim a mortal she likes, after all. He frowns, dropping his hand to curl his fingers around the arm of his throne, and says, “Seeking Death? There are far easier ways to find it. Now leave, you're boring me.”

But Gai doesn’t move, doesn’t leave. Smiles, like it could ever possibly be a joke to earn Madara's wrath, and says, “Mito told me you're the only one who can pass into Death and return. I would ask you make a trip, if I win our challenge.”

Madara scoffs. “Finding a lost love? Did your wife die? How tragic. You’ll see her in time, just be patient, mortal.”

Gai _laughs_ at that, bright. It echoes in the temple like a stray moment of sunlight, lost from the rest of time. “No, no!” he says cheerfully. “Not a wife! A boy! A strong boy with grand dreams, an orphan from a village I passed through. He was injured and no one could save him, so I will save him now.”

Madara stares, eyes narrowed, looking for deceit. Looking for a pause, a hesitation, a desire for glory beneath the veneer of a sad little tale. He can't find any, but—surely something exists. Surely no one would go through so much to save a _stranger_ from death. Not even his own son, just a boy. Just a boy whose thread was cut short, as happens so very often.

“I will kill you, if you fight me,” he says flatly. “And then you’ll have wasted your own life and lost the boy.”

Gai just smiles, easy, set. “No one has managed to kill me yet,” he says. “And it’s no waste to spend my own life trying to save someone else. The only failure would be to give up before I reach my goal.”

Maddening, Madara thinks, and the curl of his fingers breaks dark glass as he pushes to his feet. “I can slip past Obito,” he agrees, silken, a dagger wrapped in gossamer. “He is my creature, after all. I can retrieve a soul from Death and carry it back from beyond the doors he guards. But would you really rest your hopes on winning a challenge with _me_?”

“Yes,” Gai says, and for the first time in his long existence, Madara feels like an ocean dashing itself against a rock. Always before he’s been the stone, but—

Not here. Not now, and Madara can't imagine there’s another soul in all of existence who could make him feel the same.

The fires flicker, fall, leap. Madara takes a breath, breathes out starlight and ash that whirls away into Hashirama’s verdant world. Wonders, just for a moment, if he’s ever even considered for an instant that he could lose, but—

Maybe it won't be a loss. Maybe it will be the sea meeting an immovable stone, two forces coming together with neither gaining the upper hand.

“You’ll ruin yourself,” he says again, still not quite able to comprehend Gai's choice. “For one dead boy.”

“For Lee,” Gai corrects, and grins. “For his life, yes! I would ruin myself a thousand times over. What else is my life for, if not to fight for those who can't fight for themselves?”

A very, very long time ago, in a dying universe gone dark and cold, Madara's brother fell. He carried Izuna's ashes with him over an eternity of creation and destruction and rebuilding on the corpse of a decaying universe. When Hashirama finally breathed life back into the embers of him, coaxed him back into existence with kind hands and a warm heart, Madara had felt—

Well. Everything.

He supposes that’s rather the point.

“All right,” he says, and his voice cracks the silence like the glass of his throne. “You have your challenge. If you win, I’ll retrieve the soul you lost. But if I win…” He pauses considering it. There’s very little for a god to want, but—

But. That moment, so long ago, as he watched embers kindle back to life. That feeling, harsh and soft and burning, fiercer than Madara's cruelest flame.

“If I win,” he says, “I want you.”


End file.
